Noisome folks on the left and right are shouting at each other over the scientific divide. It's the angry anti-science believers vs the angry anti-religion scientists. Both sides are into demonizing "the other." Yawn. Same old same old. Into that miasma, this voice of reason from commenter itellu3times at Little Green Footballs:

Tiny and the superball (just off camera to the right) pose an ongoing challenge to the photographer's hungry eye. For every keeper, there are dozens of shots where she has just exited stage right or left when the shutter finally clicks. Note dark blue jabot, upper left, Tuck's first, brilliantly executed finished segment of the new living room swags and jabots.

While we share Sam Harris's view of science as the key to "our rational description of the universe," we disagreed then — as we do now — with his dismissal of religion:

To win this war of ideas, scientists and other rational people will need to find new ways of talking about ethics and spiritual experience. The distinction between science and religion is not a matter of excluding our ethical intuitions and non-ordinary states of consciousness from our conversation about the world; it is a matter of our being rigorous about what is reasonable to conclude on their basis. We must find ways of meeting our emotional needs that do not require the abject embrace of the preposterous. We must learn to invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand profundity — birth, marriage, death, etc. — without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality.

Between frenzied moments of batting and pouncing, Tiny retreats to a corner of the room to regroup.

Mr. Harris is understandably troubled that "irreconcilable religious commitments still inspire an appalling amount of human conflict," but it isn't religion per se but human nature itself that's the problem/challenge in our view. As we blogged here — citing anthropologist-turned-psychologist Pascal Boyer's brain-scan studies addressing the question "Why has belief proved so resilient as scientific progress unravels the mysteries of plagues, floods, earthquakes and our understanding of the universe?" — that's just the way we are after the great winnowing process of evolution:

As well as providing succour for those troubled by the existential dilemma, religion, or at least a primitive spirituality, would have played another important role as human societies developed. By providing contexts for a moral code, religious beliefs encouraged bonding within groups, which in turn bolstered the group's chances of survival, says Boyer.

The early-morning light illuminates a cat's-eye view of the dining room as playing field, where the props of Tuck's sewing project lend interest and mystery.

Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive. It has also obliged us to lie to ourselves -- repeatedly and at the highest levels -- about the compatibility between religious faith and scientific rationality.

All that jazz. We love the liquid counterpoint of cat's paw and table paw and whiskers and superball and early-morning light as Tiny trips the light fantastic.

When we find reliable ways to make human beings more loving, less fearful, and genuinely enraptured by the fact of our appearance in the cosmos, we will have no need for divisive religious myths. Only then will the practice of raising our children to believe that they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu be broadly recognized as the ludicrous obscenity that it is. And only then will we stand a chance of healing the deepest and most dangerous fractures in our world.

There must be something true. Try human nature. As Kerry of The Smoothing Plane asks in the comments re Mr. Harris's desire to "find reliable ways to make human beings more loving," "Make them …? We who?"

Comments

With the passing of folks like Bill Buckley and Richard John Neuhaus, now more than ever conservatives need to push forward a concerted effort to involve ourselves in high-volume trade of intellectual discourse. I am tired of being painted as not only lacking intellect, but fostering anti-intellectual values, by the mainstream media.

Ben Stein's "Expelled" illustrates just how ingrained this prejudice has become.

Thinking is not owned by liberals - no matter how much of the private sector they wish to buy up.

It is my belief that religions are a summation of the experience of mankind. In an effort to live in a world in which we can experience freedom and live and let live, rules of behavior must exist. These beliefs are not relative. Some produce better results than others.